Writing a Will and having Trustees

I’m sure I have asked about this in the past but can’t find it.

My adult daughter has LD and is on the autistic spectrum. We need to write our Wills but have spoken to solicitor who drafted a Will for my husband and I. We want to leave everything to daughter and son but realise we will have to do a Trust for daughter. Son would be trustee but we are advised to have another as well. But there is nobody.

I guess I don’t have any choice other than use a solicitor as the other one. We trust our son implicitly but not keen on having a solicitor involved. Also the solicitors office is 25 miles away and if they wrote to daughter she would not understand it.

Anybody else had to do this?

I was advised to have a Discretionary Trust for both sons and grandson otherwise if my son had a Trust in his sole name, the council will want to use the money in my son’s trust. Talk to Mencap’s special section. Who to have as a trustee was a major issue for me but my nephew’s wife is now a qualified solicitor.

We are getting there Bb.

Will is now drafted and hopefully our adult nephew will be the other Trustee. We have been advised to do a Disabled Persons Trust Fund. We have read all the Mencap stuff and found it very useful although they seem to be pushing a Discretionary Trust Fund but our solicitor who specialises in Wills, Trusts etc says the DPTF is just the same.

Moving on slowly. Nephew has agreed to be the other trustee.

Now the solicitor wants to know what we want to do with any money left in the Trust when everyone has passed away.

I can’t even think that far ahead. Daughter has no children nor does son. Husband doesn’t want it to go to charity.

Can’t signWills until we sort this.

Better to decide on a charity and sign, then change it later, than not to sign and all your money go to Social Services!

Signed the Wills yesterday, letter of wishes, sorted Trust. Next thing I plan to do is compile a folder for son including copies of Will, list bank accounts, Premium Bonds, passwords, deeds for houses, solicitors details, POA stuff (that’s another “to do”) so everything is in one place for him. Phew!

Dis you know premium bonds cannot be left in a will? They have to be cashed in.

I did thanks Bb. I just wanted son to know we have loads of them so he can sort it. Xx

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